


And When It Comes, It Will Feel Like A Kiss

by Saucery



Series: Spideypool Stories [4]
Category: Deadpool (2016), Deadpool - All Media Types, Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Age Difference, Alpha Wade, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha/Omega, Alternate Universe, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Arranged Marriage, Barely Legal, Begging, Bittersweet, Blow Jobs, Bottom Peter, Class Issues, Coming Untouched, Coming of Age, Consent Issues, Control Issues, Deepthroating, Domestic, Dowry System, Drama, Dubious Consent, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Ethical Dilemmas, Exhibitionism, Explicit Sexual Content, Face-Fucking, Falling In Love, Family, Feels, Financial Issues, Fingerfucking, Forced Marriage, Forced Relationship, Fucked Up, Gender Roles, Happy Ending, Hate to Love, Heat Suppressants, Honor, Humor, Jealousy, Kindness, Knotting, Living Together, Loneliness, Loss of Control, Loss of Virginity, M/M, Marriage Contracts, Married Life, Masturbation, Matchmaking, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Money, Moral Dilemmas, Morality, More Chimichangas Than Strictly Necessary, Mutual Non-Con, Mutual Pining, No Betas Exist, No actual mpreg, Older Man/Younger Man, Omega Peter, Omega Verse, Opposites Attract, Peter Has A Chip On His Shoulder The Size Of The Pyramid Of Giza, Peter Hates His Poverty, Pop Culture, Possessive Behavior, Poverty, Protective Wade, References to Mpreg, Romance, Rough Sex, Scent Kink, Scent Marking, Scents & Smells, Self-Esteem Issues, Shame, Slow Build, Snark, Social Commentary, Teenagers, Tenderness, Top Wade, Voyeurism, WADE WILSON YOU SOFTIE, Wade Hates His Looks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-29
Updated: 2016-06-12
Packaged: 2018-05-29 19:31:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 10,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6390289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saucery/pseuds/Saucery
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a world where Omegas far outnumber Alphas, a dowry system is in place, whereby the Omega’s family offers a dowry in order to secure a respectable Alpha match, with the highest dowries netting the “best” Alphas.</p><p>Aunt May struggles to secure an Alpha for her Omega nephew’s first heat. All her meager savings can afford is a butt-ugly (by his own admission) Alpha without much experience to speak of.</p><p>Peter would rather go unmated than lose his virginity to a guy that can’t go five seconds without making a Monty Python reference. However, it seems Peter has no choice…</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Wade is saner and more rational in this story than he is as Deadpool, because in this universe, he never gets to be Deadpool. As in, he never has his biology fiddled with. He’s still heavily disfigured as a burn victim, but personality-wise, he more closely resembles Wade Wilson before his transformation into Deadpool.
> 
> The title is from [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYHKT3rvggU) Bloc Party song.
> 
> Other salient points worth noting:
> 
> * Only Omegas go into heat.
> * Wade Wilson is a marshmallow.
> 
> Carry on.

* * *

 

The mating bureau was a gigantic, granite-floored monstrosity of a building, with flecks of gold glittering within the dark granite like chips of honey nougat inside a Toblerone. God, Peter was hungry. He should’ve grabbed a bite to eat from that vending machine outside the subway station, but he’d been too anxious. Now, he was regretting it. Like he was probably going to regret this day for the rest of his life.

He felt totally out of place. There were folks in bespoke suits walking around purposefully, and here he was in the waiting lounge, a lanky teenager in the only decent T-shirt he owned, which was still worn out enough for its colors to have dulled into a sepia-toned monochrome. Aunt May was dressed nicely, in her Sunday best, but a closer inspection of her dress revealed that the silver buttons were somewhat faded, and that her purse had a sewn-up rip.

They were poor. Devastatingly poor. So poor that these fancy-schmancy people gave them a wide berth, like poverty was contagious.

“Chin up, Peter,” Aunt May said encouragingly. “I’m sure there’s a lovely gentleman or lady waiting to make your acquaintance.”

Acquaintance? They’d be hopping into bed almost instantaneously. Peter was loath to admit it, but he was scared of that, of having his first heat suddenly overwhelm him with a stranger. “Right,” Peter said, without much hope. All the ‘lovely’ gentlemen and ladies would go to richer Omegas. He’d be left with the scraps. Which was logical, since he himself was a scrap.

He’d hoped for tenderness from an Alpha. For respect. Instead, he might have to settle for a jackass nobody wanted. A mean-faced, ham-fisted, horrible man in his fifties, with a beer-belly that wobbled and a penchant for ordering his Omega to fetch him snacks… or to give him a blowjob while he watched football.

The mere thought of it made Peter sick. The thought of being reduced to a barefoot-and-pregnant stereotype by an Alpha that no self-respecting Omega would mate with.

But Peter couldn’t afford self-respect, could he?

No wonder Gwen’s father had chosen Harry for her. Harry was an Omega with a gobsmackingly huge dowry, and Gwen’s college education would be secured. In return, Gwen was an exemplary Alpha, beautiful and strong and articulate, with success writ large in her future, and her seed would help Harry produce an excellent Oscorp heir.

Peter had sworn not to dwell on Gwen, his childhood crush, but it was difficult not to. Especially when Harry had gotten what Peter had always dreamed of, but all Peter had to look forward to was a quick, loveless deflowering followed by years of mind-numbing boredom and mutual distaste. Joy.

“Mrs. Parker-Jameson?” said a woman in a damask blazer-and-skirt combo that belonged on a pricey designer catalog. Her mild disgust as she noted Aunt May’s outfit made Peter grind his teeth. “I’m Sherissa, the professional matchmaker assigned to your case. Are you the guardian of the Omega, Peter Parker?”

“Yes, I’m his guardian,” said Aunt May, smiling pleasantly despite Sherissa’s rudeness. To see his usually proud aunt so determined to make a positive impression made Peter _hurt_. It was all his fault. If only he’d been born an Alpha… “This is Peter.”

Sherissa surveyed Peter, but Peter couldn’t tell if the results of her survey pleased her or displeased her. “Indeed,” Sherissa said, and extended a hand toward one of the many adjoining meeting rooms. “Please, follow me. Your match awaits you, Mr. Parker.”

Peter’s pulse kicked into high gear. “Th-thanks,” he stuttered, and detested himself for it. He had to be brave for this. He had to. He wouldn’t be picky. He’d take whoever the bureau had managed to find within their budget, because he wasn’t going to keep being a burden on Aunt May. He wasn’t going to pressure her to fork out more money for a superior match, not when there was no more money to be forked out. She’d already sold the wedding ring Uncle Ben had left her. To imagine her sacrificing even more was unthinkable.

If Omegas could operate independently—if they didn’t always have to be under the “care” of an Alpha, be it a parent or a spouse or a relative—then Peter would’ve preferred to do this himself, but he didn’t have the legal right to sign his own mating papers. Just like he didn’t have the right to own property or even drive a fucking car unless his lawful Alpha overseer had authorized it.

The meeting room they were led to was ivory-themed, with chalk-colored, architecturally pointless Doric pillars accentuating the blandness of the decor. In the midst of all that refined pallor was a gauche splash of scarlet that stood out like a sore thumb, and it was a man clad in possibly the most tacky red suit Peter had ever seen, complete with a red tie with a cartoon character on it.

Peter squinted. Was that the Tasmanian Devil from Looney Tunes?

“Oh, god, no,” Peter whispered to himself.

The Alpha sat up straight in his cream-leathered chair, beaming. “Why, if it isn’t my very own unicorn,” he said, and Peter, still reeling from the cartoon tie, gasped out loud when he saw the man’s face. “Yeah, yeah, I’m a Jackson Pollock masterpiece.” The guy waved at his own scarred, pitted features. “But at least I’m a masterpiece of some sort, right?”

“I,” said Peter, and stopped. What could he say? That looks were the least important factor to him in choosing a mate? That would be a lie. That he liked Taz the Tasmanian Devil, too? But that was when he’d been five.

A faint, quicksilver vulnerability stole across the man’s expression, but just like that, it was gone. “Greetings, adorable virgin,” he said merrily, popping up out of his chair like a horrifying jack-in-the-box, hand outstretched. “I’m your butt-ugly, unworthy, wannabe despoiler. But I’ll treat you right. All things considered.”

There was an awkward pause. Aunt May was gaping.

When Peter didn’t give his hand to be shaken, the Alpha retracted his own, and coughed. “Bad lead-in?” he asked Sherissa.

“Please,” Sherissa said, in a distinctly cool tone. “Sit down and let me do the talking.”

The man sat down. “Go ahead,” he muttered. “Convince this gorgeous boy that I deserve him.”

“It is not a matter of deserving,” Sherissa said, “but affordability.”

The Alpha winced. “Didn’t I say this isn’t about that? I don’t need a dowry.”

“You… what?” Peter boggled.

“This is Wade Wilson, your match,” Sherissa said, steamrolling over Peter like a typical Alpha. It was weird how _non_ -typical this Wade person was, that he’d sat down when Sherissa had told him to, and that he wasn’t exuding the type of caveman dominance most Alphas did prior to claiming an Omega. There was no egotistical posturing to Wade Wilson. He hardly resembled an Alpha. He was just… a guy. A random, eccentric, disfigured guy.

“Hi,” said Wade. “Er. Peter? I’ve, um, seen your photo. I mean, I—that wasn’t all it was, though. I read you were into science, and—”

“Mr. Wilson,” Sherissa said forbiddingly. “Allow me to complete the formal introductions.”

“Yikes,” Wade said. “Talk about unbreaking the ice. Like unbreaking my heart. Do you like Toni Braxton, Petey? Because I have a tendency to launch into nineties power ballads at regular intervals. Oooh, are those chocolate mints?” And Wade was digging into a small glass bowl filled with oval candies wrapped in silver-and-green foil.

Sherissa took a deep breath. Peter got the impression she was on the verge of having a meltdown.

Peter glanced aside at Aunt May, whose lips were twitching. Fine, so this was kinda funny, but—

But would Peter really have to mate with this buffoon? Could the man even shut up long enough to mate with anybody?

After thirty seconds of happy chewing noises from Wade and more too-steady breathing from Sherissa, it seemed Sherissa had composed herself enough to continue.

“Mr. Wilson was the candidate most suitable for your financial situation,” she said to Peter and Aunt May, “given that he was the sole candidate to reject a dowry. However, by law, he is required to accept some form of payment, which led to him saying—” she frowned at Wade, as if at a puzzle, and he grinned back “—that a chimichanga would do.”

“A chimichanga,” Peter said flatly.

“Gotta love ’em,” Wade said, around a mouthful of candy. “Like dicks with cheese. Two of my favorite flavors in one spectacular food group.”

“Chimichangas are not a food group,” Sherissa said.

“Says you, you poor, pathetic creature. I bet you think pancakes aren’t a food group, either.”

Sherissa took another deep breath. 

Aunt May let out a snort. An audible snort.

Peter was getting increasingly alarmed. Aunt May _liked_ this guy. Peter could tell. That was peculiar enough, given that Aunt May usually didn’t tolerate foul language, but the concept of not owing an Alpha a dowry was giving Peter the creeps. It was too good to be true. And Peter had no guarantee that the Alpha wouldn’t use their not paying as a dereliction of duty and slap Aunt May with a massive lawsuit to get an even bigger dowry out of her.

“He’s telling the truth,” Aunt May leaned in to say in Peter’s ear. “It’s okay, Peter.”

Damn it. Among the many, many disadvantages of being an Omega that Peter absolutely despised, not having a sharpened sense of smell except during a heat was near the top of his list. It made him feel helpless, unable to intuit the subtleties of a conversation, unable to deduce if he was being duped.

So Wade Wilson had been telling the truth when he’d said this wasn’t about the dowry.

Then what was it about?

“Once you buy Mr. Wilson a chimichanga,” Sherissa resumed doggedly, “you must produce the receipt, and the bond will be finalized. As per the terms of the bond contract, the Alpha named Mr. Wade Wilson will give you companionship and support through your maiden heat and beyond, for your every heat, and will take full financial responsibility for any offspring produced thereby, including responsibility for you, your medical care and all your living requirements, at all times. In exchange, you are to provide Mr. Wilson compensation for his efforts in whichever manner he desires, be it sexual or non-sexual. Any disobedience on your part is punishable by law. Are we clear?”

“Crystal,” Peter said.

“Bullshit,” Wade said, and Peter startled. “He doesn’t owe me crap. Got it? Revise the goddamn contract so it doesn’t say that anywhere.”

“It is a standard mating contract, Mr. Wilson. Changes are not permitted unless an appeal is made directly to the courts, although informal arrangements between mates can be made, and often are made, outside the bounds of the contract.” Sherissa scowled disapprovingly. “Nonetheless, that is not advised, given that the format of the contract was formulated by major legislators after years of investigating which relationship dynamic would most benefit both Alphas and Omegas.”

“Legislators who were all Alphas, no doubt,” Aunt May spoke, in her calm, authoritative voice.

Wade and Sherissa snapped to attention, despite themselves. Aunt May was the eldest—and therefore the most senior—Alpha in the room.

“My nephew is quite the catch,” Aunt May said, and Peter gawked at her. What?

“Yep, he is,” Wade acknowledged, and Peter gawked at him, as well. Was everyone here delusional?

“Which is why I aim to bond him to the finest Alpha I can. And while your proposal of not taking a dowry is genuine, it does trouble me that you are willing to forgo a dowry. Perhaps I should wait for an Alpha that judges himself or herself worthy of a dowry.”

“You gotcher answer right here,” Wade said, effectively smacking himself in the nose and then saying softly, “Ow.”

“What answer?”

“My hideous mug, ma’am. Look at it. It ain’t no Mona Lisa hung in the Louvre. But the main reason I’m not interested in a dowry isn’t just ’cause I’m a mangled freak, or because I’m an abuser who’s into beating up cute li’l Omegas and loaning them out to my friends. Which I’m not,” Wade said hurriedly. “Um.”

Peter flinched. That was a nightmarish scenario.

“The reason I’m not asking for a dowry is because it’s fucking _wrong_ ,” Wade said, surprisingly earnest. “Also, it’s irrational. Like, from where are Omegas gonna produce that sorta money in a society that barely lets them work? Just sayin’. Not all Omegas have relatives to pitch in with a dowry. Are Omegas without dowries just supposed to be left writhing in their heats until they die of heart attacks?”

“Speaking of heats,” Aunt May said, “Peter has already started on his first heat. It started two weeks ago. He’s on suppressants until he locates a match, which is why you can’t pick up on his scent. There’s nothing medically wrong with him, is what I’m saying.”

“Affordability and urgency are both concerns for the Parkers,” Sherissa rejoined. “We’re all aware that suppressants cannot be used for more than a month before they become dangerous and begin to compromise cardiac health. Peter Parker cannot sustain his current suppressed status for more than two weeks from this date. We have a few other candidates to meet within that timeframe—”

“No,” Peter interrupted, and got a glare from Sherissa for being an interrupting Omega upstart. “I want Wade.”

Everybody stared at him.

Peter cleared his throat. He was aflame with embarrassment, but if he wasn’t enthusiastic about Wade, then Sherissa would give him to an Alpha that _did_ expect a dowry. If Peter could go with Wade and preserve Aunt May’s life savings, ensuring that she had those savings to retire on, then he wasn’t about to ruin that chance.

“Are you certain?” Sherissa enquired.

Peter addressed Wade directly. “I want you,” Peter said.

Wade regarded him with an odd sadness. “I can smell that you’re lying,” he said gently.

“I want you,” Peter insisted stubbornly, like saying it would make it so. He wasn’t remotely attracted to Wade, but his wanting wasn’t contingent only on lust, was it? He could want Wade for his money. It was just as valid.

“Well,” Wade said, gesturing at Sherissa without looking away from Peter, “there you have it.”

“Peter,” Aunt May interjected, because she could smell Peter’s lie, too. “You don’t have to do this. We can find—”

“Nah,” Peter replied. “Who else are we going to find?” Particularly someone that didn’t demand a dowry?

“Mr. Wilson,” said Aunt May to the Alpha, “you must swear to never to harm my child, physically or emotionally, and you must swear to prepare him diligently during his heat, so he can take your knot without pain.”

“Aunt May, stop!” Peter hissed, appalled.

“Now, now, dear. I was a young Alpha, decades ago. I recall what it was like, being too rushed to be careful with my Omega. I was fortunate your Uncle Ben was so patient with me.”

Peter… refused to visualize any of that. At all.

“I swear, ma’am,” Wade said, and stuck out his hand for a handshake, once again. This time, Aunt May took it.

“I believe the contract dictates that this match is not permanent,” Aunt May said to Sherissa, “and that if either Wade or Peter decide to leave this union, there will be a provision for them to do so?”

“That’s correct,” said Sherissa, reaching for the buzzer on the table. “I’ll have the paperwork brought in, for all involved to reread and sign. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” Aunt May said.

“Agreed,” Peter said.

“Agreed.” Wade still wasn’t looking away from Peter. It made Peter stupidly shy, for whatever reason, so he focused his attention on Sherissa.

Sherissa, who smiled at him like a shark, and said, “Congratulations, Mr. Parker. You’ve found your mate.”

 

* * *


	2. Chapter 2

* * *

 

The contract was signed after Aunt May ordered in a chimichanga, and Peter felt a bizarre flicker of camaraderie with Wade for the visual of that chimichanga being brought to the meeting room, through that fashionable and likely scandalized throng of rich people in the waiting lounge, trailing its cheap, greasy odor all the way.

The camaraderie vanished when Peter reminded himself why he was here.

Wade inhaled the chimichanga like it was oxygen, humming in appreciation. When he was done, he wiped his fingers off on his suit and folded the wrapper into his breast pocket.

“Why’re you keeping the wrapper?” Peter asked, and Wade became all shifty-eyed.

“Memento,” Wade mumbled.

“Ah,” said Peter uncomfortably. So this meant something to Wade. Something Wade wanted to treasure. And he’d keep an oily wrapper as a souvenir?

It wasn’t moving. It wasn’t sweet. It just pissed Peter off, that the day he was sold off like cattle—even if it was for a chimichanga—would become a fond memory to this asshole. Wade must feel so morally superior, not asking for a dowry, but he got to own Peter anyway, didn’t he? He’d be balls-deep in Peter before the night was through, taking what was legally his, and Peter wouldn’t have a say in it.

“Peter.” Aunt May’s hand closed around his. There were tears in her eyes. “I’ll visit you when your heat’s finished. Or whenever you call. Just call me anytime, sweetheart.”

“Can I even call you?” Peter said, bitterness warping the query into an accusation. “What if _he_ won’t let me?”

“Er,” Wade said. “I. Yeah, you can—”

“Of course he will,” Aunt May said, steely despite her tears. “Won’t you, Mr. Wilson?”

“Please,” Wade said weakly. “Call me Wade.”

“I will, thank you.” Aunt May’s politeness could be downright scary, sometimes. Peter had no clue how she did it.

“You must cease taking Suppressa XR immediately,” Sherissa said to Peter, “as it is risky to be on suppressants longer than necessary, and they’re banned by the contract, besides. Your heat will resume within twenty-four to forty-eight hours.”

Awesome.

Being in heat was like being drugged. An Omega couldn’t truly consent during a heat, because any Alpha’s knot would do. Peter was terrified of submitting to pleasure, of asking for things he wouldn’t ask for if he wasn’t under the influence of an uncontrollable deluge of hormones that temporarily altered his brain chemistry. He was terrified of having his identity, his very personhood erased by a lust-fever.

But he couldn’t escape his biology anymore.

Sherissa phoned in a cab, and with a last farewell hug from Aunt May, Peter was relinquished into the guardianship of Wade Wilson. His mate.

A mate that apparently couldn’t drive. “I’ve got partial damage in my left eye,” Wade said in explanation, as they got into the cab. “Very partial. The fire that burned me got to the edge of my left eyelid and eyeball. So my vision’s fuzzy on the extreme left side, but I can see most objects and distances with no problem. Just not enough of no problem to get a license.”

Peter could’ve taken that opportunity to ask Wade about the fire, but then it’d sound like he cared, and he didn’t. Or rather, he was afraid that sounding like he cared would be another tool Wade could use against him.

The cab was a rattling cage. Peter was stuck breathing the same air as Wade, and he _hated_ it.

“Listen,” Peter said, fists white-knuckled on his knees. “You can do anything to me, and you can have me charged in a court of law if I don’t cooperate with you. But I just wanna say it, okay? I wanna say that I don’t want to be knotted by anyone I don’t love. And I don’t love you. I don’t even know you. I’ll be going into heat soon, so I won’t be capable of saying no, but… I’m saying it now. I don’t want you touching me more than you have to, to get me through my heat.”

“All right,” Wade said.

Peter was stunned. “All right? That’s it?” No trying to persuade Peter otherwise? It’d even be sensible for Wade to cajole Peter out of not being knotted, given that heats could go on for a full week without knotting, putting the Omega’s body under undue stress. Wade would be able to make it seem like he was sincerely concerned about Peter, not just manipulating Peter into giving it up for him.

“All right,” Wade echoed. He had the chimichanga wrapper out again, rolling and unrolling it, like it was a nervous tic. “I wouldn’t… I wouldn’t force myself on you. Ever.”

Peter doubted it.

As if he sensed that, Wade shook his head. “I’d say I’ll prove myself to you, but this isn’t about me. It’s about you. You get to have a say about what happens to you. Not me.”

“Even though you’re my Alpha?”

“But I’m not your Alpha, am I?” Wade said, without even a hint of anger. Instead, his words were quiet. Wistful. “Not without your consent.”

“Then what’re you getting out of this whole deal?”

“Someone to talk to at breakfast. Someone to watch Saturday cartoons with. Or Xena reruns. Or the Daily Show. Or any show you like,” Wade said quickly. “My tastes are pretty diverse.”

Peter peered at Wade suspiciously. He wasn’t going to trust Wade simply because he was disarmingly random, even if, according to Aunt May, the guy wasn’t evil.

Wade knocked on the back of the driver’s seat—the driver that had been eavesdropping on them, round-eyed, from the rearview mirror. “The building with the hydrant. Thanks, dude.”

The cab pulled up to the curb. Wade paid and got out, crossing over to open Peter’s door for him before Peter hurriedly opened it himself. Chivalry was a form of oppression, after all. And Wade was annoyingly chivalrous.

The apartment complex Wade took him to was shockingly dilapidated, only a marginal improvement on where Peter had lived. Which was confusing. Wade would’ve benefited from a dowry, or from any additional income.

Peter was planning to find work as a lab assistant, and paying for his own expenses. Relying on Wade’s money indefinitely was unacceptable. Even if Omegas hardly ever got hired, let alone for science jobs, because supposably Omegas were unscientific and irrational, and undependable, besides, undergoing a heat every year and being useless for that period.

If Peter ever got to have a lab of his own, he’d do research to prove Omegas weren’t that different, and that they weren’t any less competent.

If.

It’d never happen, would it?

“C’mon, c’mon,” Wade said, bouncing on his feet eagerly as he ushered Peter into his apartment on the seventh floor. There was no elevator, and they’d had to climb up nine million stairs, but Wade’s cheerfulness was back with a vengeance. “Mi casa es su casa. There’s a Chinese place across the street that does a mean chow mein—haha, get it? Chow mean?—so we could get summa that tonight. Or pizza from Donatello’s. Gotta say, though, they’re a tad trigger-happy with the anchovies.” Wade turned to Peter in dismay. “Don’t tell me you’re into anchovies.”

“Um, no?”

“Thank god.” Wade slumped theatrically in relief. “For a moment there, I thought I’d made an awful mistake.”

Peter stiffened.

“Shit,” said Wade. “That was a joke. A terrible joke, obviously. Sorry. I’m an assbutt.”

“A… what?”

“Damn, you haven’t seen _Supernatural_? I’ll remedy that, don’t worry.” Wade clapped his hands. “So! This is my humble abode. As you can see, it’s extremely, uh, humble. This is the living area,” he said, waving at the mauve-carpeted disaster that resembled an IKEA junkyard. Disassembled—or was it poorly assembled?—pieces of furniture littered the room like miniature shipwrecks. “Or, as I like to call it, the Bermuda Triangle.” Wade pointed at the kitchen with the dusty stove and empty cereal boxes piled in a colorful pyramid adjacent to the trashcan. “If it looks like I don’t cook, it’s ’cause I don’t. I can’t. Not that it matters, because I survive on eating sugary cereal by the handful. I’ll be ambushed by a gang of vigilante dentists, any day.” Wade’s voice dropped to a hushed whisper. “The possibility frightens me.”

It fell to Peter to pose the dreaded question. “And the bedroom?”

“Hm? Oh.” Wade led him down a short hallway. “This one’s yours,” Wade said, pausing at the threshold of a small room. “That one, with the pirate’s flag hanging from the doorknob? That’s mine.”

“I get my own bedroom,” Peter said disbelievingly. This was not what he’d foreseen.

“Yeah?” Wade scratched his chin. “I couldn’t assume you’d sleep with me. Let’s be honest, who would?” Wade laughed, a laugh devoid of rancor or self-consciousness. A laugh Peter couldn’t comprehend. “It was my office. It’s your bedroom now.”

Peter stepped into it hesitantly, and saw a single bed arranged perpendicularly to a window with a view of the hitherto mentioned Donatello’s, and a desk that had drawers. “This is where I’ll be spending my heat.” Even as he said it, a telltale flare of warmth began at the base of his spine. Fuck. The heat was returning already.

Wade’s eyes narrowed. And darkened.

Peter froze.

“I…” Wade blinked, and he was normal again. “I’ll go collect your personal belongings from your aunt’s digs.”

“It’s not much,” Peter said, still tense, because Wade had unmistakably caught Peter’s changing scent. “Just a duffel. I packed it before we went to the mating bureau.”

“Uh-huh,” said Wade, backing away down the hallway, like _he_ was scared of what would happen if he stayed. “Make yourself at home while I’m gone.”

“I’ll take a shower.” To mask the scent.

“A… shower,” Wade said feebly. “You. In my shower. I’m. I’m going. Wish me luck!”

“Luck? Why?”

“Your aunt might murder me with a saucepan.”

“Nope, just with manners.” Peter retreated further into his room. “I’ll be in here. The door’ll be shut when you bring my bag. Just leave it outside.” He took an unsteady breath, not even daring to hope that Wade would heed his request, but compelled to make it, nonetheless. “I’ll remain shut in till my heat’s worsened to the stage where I need—where I need company. You should wait outside till then. Until I ask you to join me.”

Wade nodded vigorously. “I’ll be outside, just holler. And I won’t—I won’t do more than the bare minimum to get you through this. Like I said in the cab. I promise.” He was so bloody earnest, Peter almost bought the act. “I guess I should… I should wish you luck, too.”

“If I was lucky, I wouldn’t have been born an Omega,” Peter retorted, and slammed the door against Wade’s reassurances.

It was disturbing how confident he was that Wade _would_ offer him reassurances.

 

* * *


	3. Chapter 3

* * *

 

The shower didn’t help, not with Peter’s heat, and not with his scent. It was an earthy scent, like that of rain hitting sun-baked clay, and it surrounded him like a palpable mist. He slid into his new bed and studied the ceiling, refusing to touch himself, refusing to surrender until he had to.

Peter glowered at the spare towel he’d dried himself with, that Wade had hung in the bathroom and that now hung on a hook above the desk. The towel had Daffy Duck on it. A winking Daffy Duck. What the hell was wrong with Wade?

Soon, however, Peter’s baggy T-shirt became unbearable, as if the flimsy polyester had inexplicably transformed into a woolen blanket. It stuck to him with sweat, and he shrugged it off, but then his boxers became unbearable, too. This time, he resisted taking them off, rubbing the heel of his palm across the bulge of his cock straining against the slippery material. Peter himself was slippery, perspiration pouring off him, and when he gave in and took off the damn boxers, he saw that his inner thighs were glistening with juices.

Previously, the suppressants had stalled his heat before it got to this stage. This was unfamiliar territory. It loomed in Peter’s psyche like a tangled wilderness full of shadowy, twisting shapes, some of which were the contortions of his own body as his traitorous mind imagined it. They were repulsive, carnal shapes, showing him buckling under the violent thrusts of an Alpha like a paper doll crushed in a giant’s grasp.

Bile rose in his throat. He could’ve puked, but he didn’t. He _wouldn’t_.

Peter’s scent was losing its patient earthiness, becoming pungent and spicy and urgent, a cry awaiting a reply. His skin stung and tingled, and he itched, back there. Viscous, semi-transparent fluid dripped out of his opening like candle-wax, hot and slow and maddening. He reached back to stick a finger up his hole with some vague notion of plugging it up so it wouldn’t leak all over the sheets, turning them gluey and tacky and irritating.

The finger was a bad idea. A very, very bad idea. Because all Peter could think of was how inadequate it was, and how he could use a much larger object, a much thicker—

No. No, he wasn’t going there. He wasn’t. As if from a distance, he heard the apartment’s front door clicking as a key was jiggled in the lock, and a few minutes later, Wade was outside Peter’s bedroom, hovering uncertainly, because Peter could smell his uncertainty. Peter’s senses had sharpened to Alpha levels, as Omegas’ senses did during heats.

There was also an aroma of cheese and pepperoni.

Peter’s stomach growled in spite of his nausea, his former appetite cropping up with a vengeance.

“I’ve, er,” Wade said, muffled by the door. “I’ve brought you pizza. For dinner. You should eat. Shore up your strength for the heat. I’ll… I’ll be out here.”

Wade’s presence withdrew, along with his hesitant smell, leaving the pizza outside Peter’s room.

But Peter couldn’t eat it. He couldn’t even sneak out to snatch the pizza, not when doing so might have him caving in to the impulse to go out there and climb onto Wade’s dick. It was surreal. It wasn’t an image Peter could’ve dreamt up without biochemical interference. He didn’t even like Wade. Yet, his subconscious had conjured up an approximation of the size of Wade’s knot, just because Wade was the only Alpha within mating distance.

The surface of the bed seemed to tilt. Gravity melted like a Dali clock, and Peter’s disorientation had him scrabbling for balance on the bed, as if it were a boat rocked by choppy waves. Seconds passed, or perhaps hours, and he found himself face-down on his pillow, drooling onto it open-mouthed, left arm still bent painfully behind him because he literally wasn’t able to take his finger out of himself, to leave himself empty. He’d given up trying to jack off like he ordinarily did, because his cock wouldn’t cooperate with him and give him an orgasm until an Alpha was in him.

He waited and waited and waited. Surely, Wade would join him of his own accord. What Alpha actually respected what an Omega said before a heat, once the heat had begun? No Alpha did.

But Wade didn’t so much as budge. The floorboards didn’t even creak, as if Wade was sitting frozen in the living room, probably picking up on Peter’s anguish but doing nothing about it. Bastard.

“Ge—” Peter croaked, because he was parched and the room was spinning, and it was like he hadn’t spoken in a thousand years. “Get over here, already. Wade. Wade…”

There was a silence. Then, at last, there were footsteps heading toward him. The k-chak of his door. And Wade’s scent, pervasive and smothering and somehow shocked, _spiking_ at the sight of Peter the way he was, face buried in his pillow and ass up in the air, fucking himself with a finger that clearly wasn’t doing it for him.

Shit. That hadn’t even occurred to Peter. That Wade would have to see him like this, naked and pathetic and glossy with sweat.

“D-don’t look,” Peter slurred, and then, “no, fuck, keep looking,” because miserable as he was, even having Wade’s gaze upon him was a partial relief, the next best thing to being touched. “Just… sit there. Don’t—don’t get any closer.”

The chair at Peter’s desk squeaked as somebody settled onto it. At least Peter didn’t have to witness Wade’s contempt of him, from this angle, or watch Wade’s expression distort with a predatory desire.

Except that Wade’s scent wasn’t predatory. If anything, it was half-frightened and half-sick, and it compounded Peter’s sickness, because it meant he wouldn’t be getting fucked, tonight. A man who was sexually excited didn’t smell like that.

Peter had three of his fingers in him, now, although he couldn’t remember when that had happened. There were obscene squelching noises as more slick flowed out of him, and he could feel his erection bobbing between his parted thighs, but he couldn’t remember parting them, either. Like he was putting himself on display. For Wade. For an Alpha that he was desperate to have knotting him.

He’d sworn to himself that he wouldn’t beg. He’d _sworn_. But he couldn’t distinguish whether the fear he was smelling was his own or Wade’s, and he could hope that Wade was into this, couldn’t he? He could hope that there was an end to this torment, that the agony that had his blood boiling in his veins would subside when he was knotted. When he broke.

Why not break, then? What was the cost? Pride? He didn’t have that. Not anymore. All he had was the sensation of being scraped raw from the inside, because he’d been fucking himself for just that long, and his wrist ached as if it was sprained. His shoulder-muscles cramped with overuse as he moved his arm. His cock twitched and dribbled, and there was a constant “uh, uh, uh” coming from his mouth, a dumb, animal sound.

Could he even beg, like this? Could he even form words? Peter was consumed by a sudden horror at being voiceless, at being unable to ask and therefore unable to get, and before he knew it, he was saying, in garbled, run-on sentences: “Fuck me. Wade, fuck me. Fuck me. Wade, please—”

And the mattress was dipping behind him, just like that. Peter’s heart throbbed, then took off, hammering away.

Here it came. This was it. And the ultimate betrayal was that he craved it.

“Peter,” Wade said, and despite the acuteness of his hearing, Peter couldn’t discern the emotion behind the name. “I’m sorry,” Wade murmured, and yes, _yes_ , that meant Wade would fuck him.

Peter groaned, spreading his legs even wider.

“No,” Wade said incomprehensibly. “No. Peter, no.”

There were hands on him, gently urging him onto his back, and Peter arched into them, sobbing, because this was an Alpha, touching him, and it was so good. It got even better when Peter’s hip brushed Wade’s denim-clad crotch, and oh, Wade was hard. So hard, but why didn’t he smell like it? He still didn’t smell right; he smelled of sorrow and despair and shame. What did Wade have to be shamed by?

“Give it to me,” Peter said, no authority in the command, because it trembled as it left him. He was shaking like a leaf, and every attempt he made to wrap his limbs around Wade had Wade pushing him carefully but inexorably away. “Why? You want it. You w-want it, I can tell.”

“I don’t want it. It’s a—it’s just a physical reaction, like yours. But I don’t—stop. Peter. Stop.” Wade’s thumb accidentally grazed Peter’s nipple, and Peter jolted, his nerves sizzling. “I’ll finger you. Like you were doing to yourself. That’s it. You need penetration from an Alpha, but we can avoid knotting.”

It didn’t… Peter couldn’t understand Wade’s rejection of him. He was choking on his pleas, but he pleaded anyway, his sobs wracking through him as a fully-clothed Wade lay beside him.

Eventually, there was a finger in Peter that wasn’t his own, and it was incredible, another jolt that shot through him like a blast, searing him to his core. He shoved himself back on it rhythmically, as if on automatic, riding it as fast as he could and asking for more. Wade gave him more, but halted at two, even though Peter begged himself hoarse for a third.

It wasn’t enough. It wasn’t anywhere near enough, but it was still something.

“Go on,” Wade said, as Peter’s orgasm built, inevitable and finally, mercifully attainable. “Go on. Come.”

And maybe Wade had been aiming for soothing, but his order emerged harsh and ragged and almost angry, and Peter—

Peter came with a scream.

He didn’t even have a grip on his cock. It splattered the sheets again and again, untouched, while Peter’s hole clenched around the unbelievably perfect drag of Wade’s knuckles in and out of him, milking him.

It went on forever.

When Peter collapsed, chest heaving, aftershocks still ran through him. He shivered as his temperature plummeted, but Wade was a solid line of warmth against him, shushing him.

Peter realized he was crying. Not the frantic sobbing of earlier, but just plain crying—childish, ugly crying, blocking his nose. He sniffled into the bed, which stank of semen and drying Omega discharge. Wade wiped his fingers clean on the sheets and held Peter as he wept, as if Peter was worth holding, even after that vile, dehumanizing display.

Peter closed his eyes, because he couldn’t meet Wade’s. After all, Wade had kept his promises to Peter. It was Peter who hadn’t kept his promises to himself. It was Peter who had failed.

Reluctantly, he relaxed into Wade’s embrace, because Peter’s exhaustion was as dark and absolute as an abyss, drawing him into its depths. But even as slumber overtook him, Wade’s hands didn’t stray. Didn’t take. Didn’t claim. They stayed where they were, a strangely comforting weight, until Peter fell asleep.

 

* * *


	4. Chapter 4

* * *

 

Peter woke to a pale dusting of sunlight over the bedroom. Under its dim glow, furniture appeared ghostly and insubstantial. He gazed out of the cobwebbed window at a dismal dawn, congested with stone-gray clouds, beneath whose weight the sky purpled like a bruise. Peter’s skin felt like a bruise, too, a worn fabric stretched too thinly over a jagged shape, with corners that could cut. Perhaps it was Peter’s soul.

The place was reeking. Peter didn’t have to turn over to know that Wade had left the bed, which meant his heat wasn’t over, because his senses were still heightened. He wasn’t in the mood for sex, nor was he aroused, but he would be, in a couple of hours.

The first wave had passed.

He’d survived it.

With Wade’s help.

Wade, who’d honored every demand of Peter’s, demands anybody else would’ve called unreasonable. An unwilling gratitude rose within Peter—a blackened, tainted gratitude that tasted like ash, hollow and without affection. Because he owed Wade even more, now. Peter was grateful, but he was also resentful, because Wade had the freedom to be kind. The privilege to be kind. He’d been kind last night, but what if he wasn’t, tomorrow? It didn’t change the fact that Peter was subject to his whims.

In an ideal scenario, Peter could’ve lost his virginity to an Alpha he trusted, an Alpha he cared for. He could’ve enjoyed it instead of—instead of being terrified throughout the process, even if Wade had been a thorough gentleman, a gentleman to the point where Peter wondered if Wade was even attracted to him at all. It’d be easier if he wasn’t, if this was a marriage of convenience in which, as Wade had said, all he expected was a housemate to watch Saturday cartoons with. Platonic companionship, Peter could do.

But then, wouldn’t Peter feel like he wasn’t doing his part? Like he wasn’t earning his keep?

The nightmarish memory of yesterday’s heat was even more humiliating in the light of day, especially because of Wade’s restraint. Peter had been vulgar in comparison. And he’d have to go out there and talk to Wade, who’d seen Peter like that, who’d heard Peter beg him to—

No. Obsessing about it wasn’t constructive. Peter had to gather the remaining shreds of his dignity—if he had any—and confront the bleak reality that he was going to have to ask an uninterested Wade to bring him off again, tonight. Wonderful.

Peter dragged himself out of sheets that would have to be laundered to rid them of his stench, put on his T-shirt and a pair of shorts, and followed the din of clanging down the hallway.

Wade was clattering around in the kitchen, panic writ plain on his features, and when Peter shuffled up to the counter, Wade whirled around, still panicky.

“I don’t have anything for breakfast,” Wade blurted. “I’ve run out of cereal.”

“Oh,” Peter said dully. “Okay.”

“God, I suck at morning afters. Not that this is a morning after. Since we didn’t, um. Have sex. That would involve consent. From both of us. And what happened wasn’t…” Wade blanched, going a sickly shade. “Crap, I should just shut up, shouldn’t I? Whaddaya say to going out to eat? There’s a café that opens early.”

Peter hugged himself, looking away. “That’s fine, I guess,” he said, and ceased hugging himself when he perceived that it made him seem even more vulnerable, and that Wade’s countenance had softened imperceptibly. “My heat’s next stage won’t be until this evening. I should be able to go out.”

“Great. That’s. Um. You can take a shower before we go, if you…?”

“Yeah,” said Peter, because he was sticky and gross all over. Hell, he was stinking like a brothel.

Back into the bathroom he went, with the Daffy Duck towel he loathed, and after Wade had been in the shower, too—his eyes averted when they passed each other in the corridor, as if to preserve Peter’s nonexistent modesty—they headed out of the apartment building and across the street.

Nestled beside Donatello’s was Gina, a café that Peter figured was owned by somebody named Gina, till he saw the Gina Torres posters on every wall.

“Intimidating, huh?” Wade said, finding them a table. There weren’t many visitors in the café, given that it was before rush hour. “But in the coolest way.”

Peter glumly surveyed a poster of Gina Torres in her Superwoman outfit, every inch the flawless Alpha. She reminded him of Gwen. Gwen’s smile flitted through his mind, and he hunched in his chair. He wouldn’t compare her to Wade, because comparing them was meaningless, but he still yearned for what might have been. What he could’ve had.

Maybe he should get over his foolish daydreams and reconcile himself to being with Wade. Wade, who had been decent, so far. More decent than Peter had given him credit for, and the longer he had his heat-sharpened faculties, the clearer it was becoming to him that Wade’s kindness hadn’t been a trick. Wade still smelled of regret and distress and, startlingly, hurt.

What right did he have to be hurt? When he’d been doing the hurting? Wade hadn’t wanted to hurt Peter, but he had.

That must be what the guilt was for. Because Wade radiated guilt, his shoulders drooping in a mirror of Peter’s slouch. It was uncanny, that they were so different, an Alpha and an Omega, but that their postures were identical.

Peter straightened up, because he couldn’t stand feeling like this anymore. He was going to be mature about it. Enough moping. He was eighteen. He was an adult according to the law. And if he was old enough to get married, he was old enough to cope with marriage.

That, and his aunt had raised him to have manners. He had to act like it.

“Wade,” Peter said, and Wade peeked up at him, hunted and furtive. “Thank you.”

“Don’t.” Wade shielded his eyes. “Please, don’t.”

“Wade,” Peter repeated. “I mean it. You did as you promised. You didn’t take advantage of me.”

“I was… I got… I responded to you. My stupid hormones responded to you. You were in pain, and I was—” Wade gulped. “I’m sorry.”

“It was involuntary. Like my heat.”

“But I _wasn’t_ in heat. I don’t have any excuse for my behavior.”

It dawned on Peter that all of Wade’s earnestness had been for real, all along. Wade Wilson was for real. How was he for real?

“And you shouldn’t have to thank me for basic decency. That oughta be the bare minimum.”

“It was definitely bare,” Peter said, without thinking about it, and Wade gaped at him. Peter went red.

“Oh, man.” Wade leaned forward, his forehead thunking on the table. A shaky chuckle escaped him. “Pun attack.”

“More like a bun attack.”

“Jesus.” The chuckle turned into an aborted giggle. Alphas giggled? “Stop. I’m supposed to be the wacky one.”

Peter was perplexed by the puns, too. This wasn’t like him—not unless he was comfortable with someone. Maybe it was weeks of tension subsiding, leaving him unwound. He’d been wired up with stress for ages, ever since Aunt May had contacted the mating bureau, and the tension had finally lifted. Not that Peter was _happy_ with his circumstances—he never would be—but he wasn’t terror-stricken, either. He could count on not being assaulted. He could count on being dealt with like a human being.

He could count on Wade.

It was a revelation. Peter should’ve known Aunt May had pegged Wade right. She’d divined Wade’s true nature by scent, which Peter hadn’t done and couldn’t have done, until now. It was like having a whole new mode of perception added to his sadly lacking repertoire, like suddenly seeing in color after a lifetime of black-and-white. And Alphas had this ability all their lives? No wonder they were so insufferably smug. They had the cheat codes, while Omegas stumbled through life on suspicions and misgivings, afraid of everything and everyone.

“You’re…” Wade trailed off, before daring to meet Peter’s eyes again. “We’ve shared the same bed, but I haven’t met you yet, have I? I haven’t met who you are.”

“No,” Peter said. “I suppose you haven’t. You’ve only met my fear.”

They looked at each other. Not soulfully, not assessingly, not fondly and not hatefully. They just… looked at each other. Like two people sitting at the same table at a diner, who were beginning to get along.

“I’ll go and make our order,” Wade said. “What would you like?”

“Um, pancakes,” Peter chose, after scanning the grease-stained menu. A stack of fluffy pancakes would be heavenly. More so since Peter hadn’t eaten since before going to the bureau.

“I’ll get the Big Breakfast. Damn, I love the bacon here.”

So saying, Wade got up and joined the queue at the counter, a queue that ended up with a disproportionately large distance between Wade and the customers ahead of and behind him. They shrank away from him, sneakily ogling his features with a revolted sort of schadenfreude, like Wade’s face was so ugly that they couldn’t tolerate being within two feet of it.

Peter… had forgotten about the face. How had he forgotten about the face? It could just be familiarity, or it could be Wade’s expressive eyes and surreal humor. It was difficult to pay attention to Wade’s face when he was calling his own living room the Bermuda Triangle.

Did Wade have to put up with that treatment everyday? How was he not a bitter, jaded rage-machine? Peter would be, if he got discriminated against like that.

Then again, Peter abhorred being treated unfairly for being an Omega, so it was fortuitous that he’d landed an Alpha who also got treated unfairly. An Alpha who might understand just why Peter was so pissed off at the world.

Scarcely five minutes had passed before a shadow fell across the table, and Peter peered up at its owner.

It wasn’t Wade.

It was a stranger. An Alpha.

A jeering, beefy man in his thirties, in a baseball cap and a Lakers jacket. He emanated an aura of aggression and licentiousness.

Peter’s heart sank.

“Well, well, well,” the man said. “What have we here? An Omega in the middle of his heat? You shouldn’t wander around by yourself smellin’ like that, darling. Like an invitation to an orgy.”

Peter shrank in on himself before steeling his nerves and glaring back at the brute. As much as he abhorred admitting to being an Alpha’s property, Aunt May had drummed the lesson into him since he was a child—once bonded, his most effective defense was to admit to having an Alpha. The law forbade approaching another Alpha’s Omega. “I have a husband,” he said, hoping it’d make the interloper go away.

It didn’t. It only encouraged him. “Really? Has he mounted you yet, sweetie? I bet you spill that honey like the li’l slut you are.”

Rage flashed through Peter. He was about to surge up from his chair, his aunt’s advice be damned, when there was a blur of movement and a meaty thud, and Peter goggled as the not-insignificantly-sized Alpha was thrown against the wall by Wade. And _held there_ , the man’s shoes dangling inches off the ground, Wade’s fist in his collar, the muscles of Wade’s arm bunched up like knots in the world’s thickest rope.

“Excuse me,” Wade said, smooth and deadly. “Were you talking to my Omega, fuckboy?”

A hush fell over the diner.

This time, Peter did shrink in on himself, because this was mortifying—Wade leaping to his rescue like that, and looking so natural doing it, like Peter couldn’t do it for himself.

Wade’s canines were exposed by a snarling upper lip, and his eyes were… They were unrecognizable. Alien. Feral. There was no humanity in them.

Peter felt a frisson not unlike adrenaline, a frisson that shimmered through him like a living flame, lighting him up from within until he was sweltering in his clothes. Shit, he was getting wet again. Was this barbaric Alpha chest-thumping doing it for him? It must be his heat, resuming earlier than he’d predicted. It had to be.

“Not my fault you left him all alone,” the Alpha wheezed, and Wade drew his other hand back, folding it into fist.

Was he going to punch the guy? Heck, Wade looked like he was gonna kill him. Had Wade not noticed they were in public? Not that it mattered where they were. Peter didn’t approve of violence, even against schmucks like these.

“Wade,” Peter said, surprised at how calm he sounded. “Stop.”

Wade stopped, like Peter had pressed a pause button. The humanness returned to his eyes.

The Alpha, jittery and put-off, freed himself from Wade’s loosening clutch. “Pussy-whipped loser,” he spat, before exiting the café. Revulsion swamped Peter. He could’ve been married off to that Alpha. He could have been fucked by him, impregnated by him.

With the confrontation defused, the patrons went back to business as usual, and the staff that had been gathering to stall a potential disaster drifted back to serving tables.

“Never do that again,” Peter admonished, and Wade grimaced.

“Yeah, sorry,” Wade apologized. “That was—I mean, you’re not my—I shouldn’t have said—that must’ve scared you.”

“I wasn’t _scared_ ,” Peter said indignantly. “I was furious.”

“Of course. That’s… Of course.” Wade laughed quietly. “You’re amazing, you know that?”

“If I was amazing, I could’ve defended myself without an Alpha’s assistance. The moment I get a job to pay for it, I’m joining a dojo and training in how to fight. Karate, Judo, Aikido. Any style there is.”

“Um,” said Wade. “I. I can teach you. I’ve learned some martial arts.”

Peter scrutinized Wade’s body, the broad shoulders and the arms that could heft a grown man. It wasn’t as implausible as it could’ve been. “The contract said you made your living as a freelance web designer. So is learning how to fight your hobby?”

“Something like that.” Wade glanced away, dodging Peter’s question. “Should we go home after collecting our orders, rather than eating here? I don’t reckon the management is going to wanna see me here for too long. Given what just happened. And…” Wade coughed discreetly. “I can tell… That is, you’re…”

“The second wave of my heat has commenced,” Peter said. “I’m aware of that, thanks.” He fidgeted, wetness oozing into the seat of his jeans. He had to get to the privacy of Wade’s apartment, or he’d wind up giving everybody in this café a show. “Yes, let’s go.”

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m so sorry for putting “Aunt May” and “pegged” in the same sentence.


	5. Chapter 5

* * *

 

Wade excavated the ruins of his kitchen for chipped plates on which they could eat, since he didn’t normally eat out of plates. There were plastic forks and knives, too, all mismatched and likely from a variety of takeaways.

“Dig in,” Wade said merrily, and Peter did just that.

It was weird, eating while going into heat, but Peter knew he had to get some calories in him, or he’d faint.

It got weirder when they were done with breakfast, however, the tentative companionship between them defaulting to awkwardness. Wade mumbled about freshening up and slunk off to the toilet, like this was Peter’s apartment and he was trespassing on it, instead of Peter trespassing on his.

Peter sat there, on the rickety stool beside the kitchen counter, and tried not to freak out.

He could do this. Wade wouldn’t force sex on him—wouldn’t even stand near him without permission—so it was up to Peter to take what he had to, to get through this. It was getting more and more challenging to think, but Peter was determined that for this second wave, he’d be in control. Or in as much control as he could be.

A part of him preferred to be out of control, because then he could blame his actions on the heat. On Wade.

But that was the coward’s way.

Peter was going to be responsible for himself, because now that he wasn’t petrified of being raped, the concept of touching Wade didn’t make him ill, either. It would be Peter’s call. Peter’s choice. He still wasn’t going to let Wade fuck him, but there were other methods of receiving a knot. He was going to finish this. He had no intention of enduring another day of this madness. The heat would end, and it would end today.

So he stood up, deposited his plate in the rusty kitchen sink, and went to the lounge room. Jerkily and without any grace, he stripped out of his clothing, almost tripping on the hem of his pants. He laid the clothing aside on the coffee table. His heat rendered him impervious to what must’ve been a chilly morning, but his nipples stiffened into peaks anyway. His cock stiffened, too, and the syrup secreted by his glands seeped steadily from his hole.

That was how Wade found Peter, nude and primed and waiting for him.

Wade faltered, wide-eyed and dumbfounded. “Wh-what? Peter?”

“Please,” Peter said, and gestured at the couch, noting that his voice was rasping. “Sit down.”

Wade stayed where he was. “You don’t have to…”

“Yeah, I do. I have to. I have to be in charge of this. Please,” he added again, hating that he was compelled to plead for his own agency.

Wade edged cautiously toward the couch, perching on it as if prepared to run. He jumped when Peter knelt before him.

“Let me,” Peter said, the carpet rough under his knees. It was ancient and stained enough that the liquid welling out of him wouldn’t cause a noticeable mess. Peter himself was rapidly deteriorating into a mess, because from down here, he could see the growing bulge in Wade’s jeans. He could smell it through the denim, tempting and wrong and irresistible. “Remember what you said about penetration? I’m—I’m going to suck you off. That counts, right?”

“Oh, fuck.” Wade covered his face with his hands. “Peter,” he said through them, muted and shaky. “Don’t. This isn’t what you want.”

“It’s what I’ve decided to do.”

“That isn’t the same thing. And you—” Wade gasped when Peter rested a palm on his fly. “You’re in no state of mind to decide.”

“Does that mean I should just let you use me, because you know better?” Peter was ticked off, and he yanked at Wade’s zipper.

“No, that wasn’t what I… _Peter_ ,” Wade said, because there was Peter’s hand, kneading the dampness of Wade’s plain Y-fronts, feeling out the hardness underneath.

Peter’s breaths quickened. Fluid trickled down his thighs, and his hole flexed greedily at the sight of that massive erection, trapped in cotton so threadbare that it was practically see-through. Before he could doubt himself, Peter leaned in and pressed his nose against it, the heavy musk that flooded his nostrils making him moan.

“God. Oh, god,” Wade was saying. He grabbed the couch’s pillows in a death-grip, as if to stop himself from grabbing Peter. “We could just do the fingering, you don’t have to—”

“Damn it, Wade, shut up,” Peter slurred against Wade’s underwear. The heat was burning away his reason, and his focus was narrowing to nothing but the prospect of having Wade in him. Filling him. _Hurting_ him. “I want this.”

“You don’t.” The certainty in Wade’s pronouncement wavered when Peter tugged the Y-fronts down, baring Wade, and ran his teeth along Wade’s straining length.

Peter had meant to be teasing, but Wade’s hips lurched, and the sound that emerged from him was so wounded that Peter briefly thought he’d injured Wade. But Wade’s prick spurted fat beads of pre-come that smeared salty-bitter across Peter’s lips, and Peter was licking them, just like that, lapping at them thirstily.

And he was thirsty. He wasn’t sure when he’d segued from mouthing at Wade to swallowing him, but his brain sparked warning signals when his throat became too stuffed with cock to breathe, and his lungs contracted achingly, robbed of oxygen.

It occurred to Peter, distantly, that he was deep-throating Wade, but even that wasn’t enough. Peter was opening up both above and below, the muscles of his ass as well as his windpipe relaxing in anticipation of a knot. Even the pores of his skin were opening, as if his entire body was starved, sensitized to every shift in the currents and every beat of Wade’s racing pulse, audible to Peter’s ears and fluttering palpably against Peter’s tongue.

Peter was more than hungry. He _was_ hunger. His scalp prickled with sweat, his armpits disgustingly—deliciously—moist, and he felt dirty, so, _so_ dirty, but it was the best he’d ever felt. He was fucking himself on the iron-hard, velveteen, seemingly endless stretch of Wade’s cock, slurping around it, driving himself further with each brutal, self-inflicted plunge. He had to work for it, because Wade wasn’t doing anything, wasn’t so much as rising to meet Peter halfway.

Wade had fallen silent, nothing escaping him but shallow, cut-off, irregular exhalations, and when Peter looked up, he saw Wade staring at him, pupils blown. So Peter kept looking up, even as his eyes watered and his vision grayed. He had to inhale, but he couldn’t pull off to do it. He just couldn’t. Not even to ask Wade to just thrust, already, to fuck Peter’s mouth like it was made to be fucked. At this rate, Peter would pass out from asphyxiation, suffocating himself on Wade’s dick, and that—

That image had his own hips pumping uselessly, humping the air. Unbelievably, he began to come, in thick, milky ropes that striped the carpet, a rush of thinner, runnier ejaculate gushing out of his hole, ejaculate that should’ve been stoppered by a knot. He whined in complaint.

Wade uttered a strangled curse and came at last, throwing his head back against the couch. The base of his shaft swelled into a knot, tight and huge and full of exactly what Peter needed, exactly what he had to _have_ —

But Wade extracted his knot before Peter could have it, leaving just the tip of his penis inside, shooting into Peter’s throat in a mossy, pungent burst so copious that Peter could’ve drowned in it. It hit Peter’s gullet in tide after tide, intoxicating, overflowing, dripping past Peter’s chin. Peter swayed forward drunkenly, seeking the knot at its source, but it was too late—Wade was up and off the couch, panting, hauling his jeans back on. Or trying to. His knot prevented him from doing so, and his cock swung between his legs, reddish and tumescent and gleaming with Peter’s spit.

Peter reached out, blinded by instinct, but Wade only staggered backward another step. He looked _wrecked_ , lost, nothing like an Alpha at all.

“That—that would’ve dislocated your jaw,” Wade stammered. “If… If I hadn’t held back, you… I would’ve hurt you.”

“I wanted you to hurt me,” Peter said, raspier than before, his throat torn and battered. There was a hint of blood on his tastebuds, metallic and strange.

“I made you _bleed_.” So Wade had picked up on the blood. But his knot was as big as it had been, no sign of abating yet, and Wade spun around to hide it, as though ashamed. “I… I have to go.”

Peter was left there on the floor, the heat fading from him and turning him cold.

Rationality was restored to him in glass-sharp, agonizing increments, and for the first time, Peter wondered if maybe Wade hadn’t wanted this, just like Peter hadn’t wanted it yesterday. Maybe that was why Wade had been holding back, not even moving as Peter had pleasured him. Or maybe he hadn’t wanted to exploit Peter during his heat, or whatever it was Wade was convincing himself of. The man had a talent for self-punishment.

Wade had given Peter what precisely what Peter had demanded—not more and not less. But would that be enough to end the heat? Without Peter taking Wade’s knot? Peter had hoped that Wade wouldn’t be able to resist knotting Peter, regardless of the consequences, but Wade had resisted. He always resisted. How did he do it?

Peter crawled onto the couch, loose-limbed and sluggish, curling in on himself. He wished it would all go away—the heat, the sated lassitude that was clouding his judgment, and the horrid dependency he’d developed on Wade’s compassion, on Wade’s kindness. He hadn’t had that dependency at the start. He couldn’t fathom why he had it now. It must all be Wade’s evil plan. Pavlovian conditioning.

Peter was dozing lightly when he sensed Wade laying a quilt on him. Wade swept Peter’s hair from his forehead, as careful as ever, and it was only then, when Peter was on the brink of sleep, that he realized he could no longer identify Wade by scent.

The heat was over.

 

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> Like my writing? Want updates and sneak previews? Follow me on [Tumblr](http://saucefactory.tumblr.com/)! I also run a blog for my [original gay fiction](http://dominiquefrost.tumblr.com/).


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